Coleman Barks - The Illuminated Prayer: The Five-Times Prayer of the Sufis

I n the Sufi Way, endeavors are sanctified at their beginning with the words Bismillah ir Rahman ir Raheem,

I N THE N AME OF G OD,

BOUNDLESSLY COMPASSIONATE, BOUNDLESSLY MERCIFUL . How wonderful that mercy and compassion are given as the essential textures of an all-transcending Creator. These nurturing qualities evoke a compelling Deity, God the Mother Father. In the gender-rich Arabic grammar, Allah is masculine, Rahman and Raheem feminine. And the root word of both Rahman and Raheem is womb.

The simple Bismillah at the top of the opposite page comes from a letter sent by the blessed Prophet. Below it is an illuminated Bismin rendered in Hebrew by the Sufi calligraphier Muhammad Abdul Kadir. It bears witness that the Prophet came, like blessed Jesus before him, as a truth-bearer and reviver in the ancient line of the Hebrew prophets. May their one song permeate this book!

O NE S ONG

All religions,
all this singing,
is one song.

The differences are just
illusion and vanity.

The suns light looks a little different
on this wall than it does on that wall,
and a lot different on this other one,
but its still one light.

We have borrowed these clothes,
these time and place personalities,
from a light, and when we praise,
were pouring them back in.

S PLITTING THE S TONE

W hen my last book, The Illuminated Rumi, was finished at noon on the day of the deadline, my wife, Sally, and I had to hand-deliver the disks to our editor in New York City. The drive from Pennsylvania was a navigational disaster. An untested shortcut got us on the wrong expressway in rush hour; we finally landed in midtown Manhattan as night fell, frazzled by traffic and lateness. With no time to park, I went straight to the publishers, pulled half onto the sidewalk, and headed into the building, leaving Sally in the car.

At that exact moment, a middle-aged man stepped under the buildings cavernous entrance arch, unrolled a prayer mat, and with quiet dignity began the evening devotions of Salat, the Five-Times Prayer. We had arrived right on cue. It was a prophetic moment, though I did not catch it at the time.

Michael Green

I ts actually rather stunning to contemplate regularly breaking the momentum of our obsessive daily pursuits to center ourselves on the richness of our deepest hearts desire. But why not? Split the stone and there am I.

If The Illuminated Prayer is a teaching book, as its first student I know how important it is to see The Prayer through the lens of universality. Anything less creates more division. Coleman contributed a running commentary of his remarkable Rumi translations. Rumis deep connection with our teacher Bawa Muhaiyaddeen unfolded as the book grew. Together, these two masters collaborated to guide this book, and may Gods peace forever surround them.

Jellaludin Rumi was born at the beginning of the thirteenth century in an outer province of the Persian empire, in what is now Afghanistan. His father fled with his family before the threat of the invading Mongol hordes and wandered the Middle East until he was invited to teach at a religious college in Konya, Turkey. At his fathers death, Rumi took over his position as head of the seminary community. Rumi was a popular scholar, a respected author, and an expert in mysticism. His life was by all accounts a success until the fall of 1244, when he met his awakener, a mysterious wandering dervish of blazing temperament, one of the hidden enlightened ones. Shams, whose name means sun, had traveled everywhere searching for someone who could endure my company. One story of their encounter holds that Shams cast all of Rumis books into a fountain, and at the youngers protest, he retrieved them dry and undamaged. Rumi promptly abandoned his comfortable honors and entered into a series of intense communion retreats with Shams. Finally, at the death of his beloved God-friend, Rumi became nothing, became everything, became the amphoras neck through which a great flood of transformational poetry poured into the world.

Our awakener was a sparrow of a man named Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, of whom less is actually known than Rumi. There are scattered encounters with Bawa around the turn of the century, but he firmly entered modern history in the forties, when he was discovered by pilgrims at a jungle shrine in Sri Lanka venerated by Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, and Muslims. He seemed immensely old, timeless, although his appearance was youthful and his skin as smooth as a childs. Bawa would always turn aside questions about his personal history, often with the reply that the only important story was Gods story. Eventually, Bawa came to America and began a simple existence in a Philadelphia row house. He owned nothing, was owned by no one, and gave life to Rumis words: The Sufi opens his hands to the universe and gives away each instant, free. Unlike someone who begs on the street for money to survive, a dervish begs to give you his life. He charged no fees, accepted no presents, and treated every seeker like family. Anyone present during mealtime was always invited to stay. He would ask the simple but spiritually galvanizing question: What do you want? Whatever the answer, Bawa would return it transformed. Jonathan Granoff tells of how he witnessed the workings of this Sufi guru during an afternoon session with two aspirants. The first seeker expressed a burning desire to know God. Bawa responded with a homespun Ayurvedic recipe for curing hemorrhoids. The second, looking for practical guidance in a minor family drama, was treated to a lofty discussion of highest perfect wisdom. Jon interviewed each afterward and found that Bawa had hit spectacular bulls-eyes. The first visitor indeed suffered from terrible hemorrhoids, and what he had felt was the utter relief that someone could completely see through all his defenses and posturing and still deeply care for him on every level. In that moment of psychic diagnosis, layers of shame dissolved; resistance to faith melted. Likewise, the second answer had found the crucial and unspoken question. Bawa often broke into devotional song, entering into intimate conversation with a God who was at once transcendent, personal, and the deepest part of us. Slowly it dawned that in this person the purest Vedic nondual tradition was embracing purest Islam. In the great procession of spiritual revelation systems, Oldest wed Newest, not symbolically, but unitively and transformatively. Some great cycle was completed.